The Gambler
by FyodorAA
Summary: A quickly written piece:- One insight into the thoughts of Albus Dumbledore as he prepared for the end. Ruminations on the three things that seem to be most associated with him: the 'idea' of Love, his penchant for manipulation, and his relationship with Harry.
You are a gambler. The stakes are high, the reward is paramount, and the idea of failure is beyond unthinkable. You have sacrificed so much (and so many) for the end game that will soon come. So why must you feel so burdened?

It is because you love him.

Is it a sign of how far you've fallen that the realisation of your fatherly affection shakes you so? Is it your penance, your punishment, your penalty to be paid? You look at him – constantly you are looking at him – and when you do your heart constricts and you are torn between adoration and paralysis.

The boy is so good, so noble, so selfless. And one day soon he will die.

He will die not by your hand, of course, but it will be your fault nonetheless, because you have raised him like a lamb to the slaughter. You have negotiated the obstacles he couldn't possibly have imagined. You have pulled the strings he never should have had. You sought to make a hero and found yourself a champion! He will be the saviour your world needs. Oh, how unjust it is, to ask so much of a boy who has lost almost everything!

Because Harry is so fundamentally good that he breaks your old heart... because you love him. He is the son you never had; the one child that has shined brightest in a life dedicated to the education of the young. You have failed him, and still he forgives. You lie to him, and still he trusts. It is no mystery why. Harry James Potter is a far wiser man than Albus, Percival, Wulfric, Brian, Dumbledore, after all.

This is a truth your brilliant mind easily grasped a very long time ago, for Harry, rather like his mother, can look past the superficiality of appearances and actions to see the man beneath. Your young hero sees only intent - only the character of the person instead. Harry looks at you, with young Lily's eyes, and sees past your failings to the love that you have tried so hard to ignore. And when he does, he gives you something you have absolutely no right to possess. He gives something only the best of us can truly give. He gives you all that respect and love right back.

You failed him. You couldn't save his parents. You didn't rescue his beloved godfather. You forced yourself to turn a blind eye to the sort of suffering you once swore no child should ever have, because you also know heroes are born from adversity. You lied and manipulated and watched from afar, and all this time, he has loved and respected you, guilty only of desperately seeking the true affection of another.

This, more than anything, is the cause of your guilt. The boy loves so freely because you helped engineer the sort of childhood where love was never given at all. It is but another crime to add to a long list titled 'Sacrifices for the Greater Good.' (Even now, bile arises at the thought of your foolish ways and plots with the pretty blond boy that you cannot bear to remember or forget in equal measure.)

You spend your days fearing and hating. Fearing his end and hating your mind, because as brilliant as it is, it isn't enough. Perhaps you are right to believe that Voldemort's use of Harry's blood (that despoliation, that sacrilegious misuse, that horrific, disgusting, vile corruption of a noble sacrifice) will be the saving grace, but the problem with guesses and gambles are known to a billion betters the world over. Why can't the man who found the twelve uses for dragon blood, of all things, discover a way to eradicate a cancer from the mind of an innocent child? Why can't you find a way to destroy a horcrux without destroying the object? Why can't you figure out a way that doesn't end in the death of a boy who deserves to live more than anyone else on the planet?

And isn't that a scary thought – because you truly believe it. Not rationally, of course, because you are nothing if not logical. But instinctively? Intuitively, inherently, with the heart instead of your head? You believe that no-one deserves life quite like Harry Potter. There is a part of you that would have the world burn if it meant making him happy.

Hadn't you once, after all, broke the hearts of a hundred children just to see him smile? That was, of course, the first time you truly realised something was wrong with The Plan. On a whim you gave the House Cup to Gryffindor, but of course, _Harry_ deserved it. And you've never been one to delude yourself (past the age of eighteen, anyway) - that was all for Harry, you knew it then as well as you do now.

He ruined all your plans that year, didn't he? You are Albus Dumbledore, magical genius and polymath extraordinaire. Some people like to think you the chess-master, manipulating all the pieces into the right places so all can have their rightful part to play. You know better, of course, as you often do. You're not playing chess. You're gambling, and like with many other things, you are very, very good at it.

But you're not perfect.

You had certainly thought your plan perfect though, hadn't you? The table had been analysed with almost pin-point accuracy. You had observed the lay of the land and the cards at your disposal and you had known what to do. The perfect strategy had come to you. The gambit was great. You were going to win.

You would wait until Harry's first year. You would take the Philosopher's Stone, the shining jewel of your old mentor, and the easiest route to revival for Tom Marvolo Riddle. You would place the stone in your own walls, you'd open the doors, and if that still wasn't enough, you'd present the boy as a mystery just waiting to be uncovered. The stone would be superficially protected all the way to the Mirror of Erised, and then, then and there, Riddle would stand and stare and pace before the Mirror, destined to fail forever. You would saunter down then, perhaps with a lemon drop, certainty with the Elder Wand in your hand, all calm and collected and ready for the battle to come. Quirrell would be saved. The wraith of Voldemort would be contained. The gambit _**would**_ pay off, and Voldemort would be defeated, if not dead, and Harry would have time. You would have time.

You left for the Ministry triumphant. Oh, how the plans of great men fail!

You forgot to account for Harry. An understandable, but fatal mistake, ultimately. Noble, selfless, brave beyond reason Harry, who stormed in, reckless because he had come to believe that authority would not protect him when he needed it to.

You still remember the moment of shock, and how it transitioned into genuine terror, and that foreign feeling of being completely and utterly lost; that sense of lesser mortals when they come to truly comprehend their status as merely playthings of fate, buffeted only by a maelstrom of chaos and chance.

You remember, more than anything, the fear that flooded your veins when you raced to the Third Floor that day. You expected to see green eyes cold and vacant. You expected to see James Potter lifeless once more. Instead, you raced in just in time to find Harry collapsed, unconscious but mercifully alive. Do you _**remember**_? Of course you do. The sense of relief was astounding.

But then, so was the shame. You had gambled recklessly. You had grown arrogant and complacent and manipulative, too attached to playing God to take note of the subject of your bet, and a child had nearly died. Oh, what will Lily and James say, when it comes your time to meet them? (Ah, the stuff of nightmares.) And then there was Quirrel, of course, and it is here that the chess analogy raises its ugly head, because that all too forgotten man _**was**_ merely reduced to a pawn piece mindlessly sacrificed by both players in the end.

How could you not love Harry, after that, though? You certainly could not hate the boy, even after he ruined the work of years; you could only love a child whose first thought was the safety of others. To dive in so selflessly, so thoughtlessly... You were in awe, weren't you? You had done your job too well.

Perhaps your love should not have shocked you so. After all, who truly appreciates love more? The passionate man who loves so freely he never stops to think of it, or the rational man who cannot help but observe it from afar? You had known selfish love, of course, all those years ago. You had loved as a son, frustrated but loyal, and you had, deep down, adored as a brother, although Aberforth does not command such feelings any more. (Yet another shame to hide from.)

The memories of lust are still as strong as ever, too, even now. That excitement, that raging euphoria, that sense of purpose that roared to life and dominated your faculties – the closest you have ever come to the sort of romantic love you have since seen in a century of observing students taking their first steps towards intimacy.

Ha, but what did you do when it all ended predictably in tears? You shut yourself off from the world and lived the life of a stoic, never getting too close; always negotiating the perfect balance between unacceptable distance from humanity and painful intimacy. Perhaps you were always going to be shocked by a person like Harry, then – agape love was never something you could truly ever comprehend. How could you, when you have forced yourself to see love as a goal and not a way of life? It's one thing to commit to believing in the fundamental goodness of people. You have preached it. You have wanted to believe it. So very badly, at various times. Heroism, tolerance, empathy, altruism – noble goals indeed, you thought. You wanted to believe in the power of such things, but it was a want lacking true conviction, wasn't it? You had never truly felt that goodness yourself, you had never really seen it. There were so many before who were heroic, of course. People who loved, who sought tolerance and selflessness, but it took a child's courage to bring forth the great realisation of your life. It took the great Albus Dumbledore until his last years to know what many far less intelligent people knew from their very first steps – we live for love, and we live to love, and a life well-lived is _**only**_ a life in which you have loved.

Irony of ironies, then - oh how life takes the time to prank us all! Harry Potter is the living vindication of all the best you have ever thought and hoped and believed, and he is the very product of all your worst excesses when you chose to turn your back on philosophy for the sake of necessity.

Even now you do not stray from The Plan, but the motivation has changed. Before, it was a matter of Necessity. The Greater Good, if one must use that awful phrase. Great men are burdened with the hopes of the rest in times of crisis, and with that responsibility you chose to sacrifice the one for the many. The rational choice. The right one, for the sake of your world. Harry would suffer, but life would go on.

But now, what point is life, if Harry never gets to truly experience it? What is the point of saving the world, if it means the loss of your precious boy? Now, you plot for him. Now you seek to save him. Now you gamble, one last time, for a miracle. Last time you saw Ariana alive when you looked into the Mirror, but you suspect you might just see Harry, old and happy, if you were ever to look now.

Still, you cannot spare him death. You cry in your moments of weakness, like the pathetic old man you have become, because one day he will know your secrets. He will know your plans, and your flaws, and your manipulations, and he will know your sins. He will know them all before he must die.

You have gambled it all and now you hope for a miracle. Did you call it right? You hope Voldemort made the mistake of a lifetime when he abused Lily's noble sacrifice that night in the graveyard. Did he tether Harry to life, truly? You have risked it all on that one last hope – not to save the world, but to save your boy. This is the end-game. This is the final gambit, the great gamble, your greatest legacy. You have risked it all. Let the chips fall. In your most sentimental moments, you think – 'Let love win.'

Let me win, you wish.

Let Harry win.

Let him _**live**_.


End file.
